


Next Time Around

by PhantomEngineer



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-03-06 11:09:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13410003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhantomEngineer/pseuds/PhantomEngineer
Summary: After dying and finding himself at King’s Cross Station, Harry goes back. He just goes back slightly further than he had been expecting.He goes back to when the Prophecy is first made, to when Severus overhears it. He goes back so he is there when Severus is starting to have second thoughts about being a Death Eater. In the past, he ends up getting to know Severus as an actual person. Both of them need some emotional support and both of them have no one to reach out to. The fact that they are a similar age and at a similar stage in their lives eases tensions that might otherwise have existed.Severus doesn’t really appear in the first couple of chapters.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Because Rei Prince wanted a story like this, so here it is.

Back, he had to go back. He had so much still to do, people relying on him. He felt a responsibility to them, both crushing but also holding him up, buoying him on. His mind was full of his friends, still lingering with the living. People had died, sacrificed their lives for him, from his parents ever onwards. Snape the most recent one, dying slowly, painfully as he held his gaze. The memories of that moment, blood-soaked and stark, stuck by him, enhanced only by his trip through Snape’s memories to bring him to his own death. Snape had given his life for him and the cause, not just through dying. He had lived every minute of his life to protect Harry and defeat Voldemort. He owed him more than he could imagine, though he was trying.

Idly, he wished he could have known sooner, could have known him as a person and eased a bit of his burden, though such regrets came far too late. He knew that he had to go back, back to the living to continue with his goal. To defeat Voldemort, no matter what. To make all the sacrifices, lives and deaths laid down, worthwhile. So he went back, he chose to go back, he chose to live again.

He was lying on the ground, in the mud. The world seemed to be spinning, spinning more than it should have. It was as if he were one with the whole planet, rotating through space, hurtling round the sun. Parts of him seemed to be spinning at different rates from Earth, limbs flying of in different directions, but it was all in his head. His head was spinning too fast, the dark sky above a blurred mess of stars that streaked across his vision. Shooting stars but it was not them that moved, but rather his perception of everything. 

He felt sick. It took him a few attempts to lift himself to sitting, as gravity seemed to have broken. He had no idea which way was up and which was down, so once he managed to struggle to a feeble all fours position he quickly collapsed back into the mud. He threw up, not a lot as his stomach was nearly empty, but a lot of it ended up down his robes. He didn’t care, too focused on trying to make the world stabilise. He just wanted everything to be still for a moment, to give him a chance to catch his breath and his thoughts. His thoughts wanted to be sick too, to retch all over the inside of his skull, but that wasn’t possible. He laughed slightly, his thoughts queasy and incoherent, which just made him cough up some more bile, dribbling down his chin.

He had no idea how long it was that he spent in the mud, lying there retching and giggling, his brain mostly absent from the proceedings. Blearily his eyes adjusted to the dark, not focusing properly but allowing him to see vague outlines. The scenery seemed familiar, but at the same time strange. He couldn’t remember quite where he had been, or where he expected to be, but he felt like he was not far from the Hog’s Head, though he had little trust in his judgement. It seemed like something out of his memories, or someone else’s, older and newer at the same time. Familiar silhouettes that he shouldn’t be seeing outside of his memories were moving in front of his eyes, replaying scenes he had seen before in someone else’s Pensieve, that he had replayed inside his own mind, that shouldn’t be replayed again in front of him but there they were. His ears were ringing, dulling and warping any conversation he might have heard but he didn’t need to hear as he had already heard what was said. A blurred spectre like Dumbledore, angry. A blurred shadow of a young Snape, being thrown out of the pub.

Unlike Harry, Snape got up with ease. Harry had no idea if he had not noticed him, lying pathetically on the ground still unable to drag himself to even just kneeling, or if he simply didn’t care. Snape scrambled to his feet, his face too hidden in the darkness for Harry to get any hints of his thoughts before he disappeared, Apparating away, leaving Harry a boneless heap, muddy and covered in his own vomit. It didn’t seem that long ago that Harry had been leaving Snape behind, a bloody corpse lying prone on a filthy floor. It seemed faintly unreal, parallel situations that shouldn’t coexist within one comprehension of the world, as unreal as his present situation. If his brain could stop the world from spinning, if his senses would comply and do their job of telling his brain what was going on around him properly, he might have been able to draw better and more reliable conclusions, but as it was all he could feel was disorientated confusion. 

The sensation of extreme dizziness lasted until dawn, which was when he finally managed to sit up without falling straight back over. By then he had thrown up everything he possibly could, reduced to retching miserably but bringing up nothing but tears. As the Hog’s Head had closed the final remaining customers had stumbled out past him, paying him no heed. The most attention he had received was when the pub was locked up, the staff almost walking over him with the casual dismissal of just another drunk who was not their problem. 

Feeling pathetic, he crawled so he could sit resting against the wall of the nearest building, grateful to have something to lean against. It took him far longer to crawl there than he would have liked, and took far more of his strength than it should have. He cleaned his robes with magic, which felt like an awful amount of effort and nearly made him retch again. He was starting to feel hungry, but at the same time his stomach turned at the mere thought of food, clearly threatening to bring anything he ate up. He didn’t think he had the strength to chew anyway, let alone drag himself to somewhere where he could buy food. He doubted he had any money on him anyway. 

Sitting there as the cold and unforgiving light of day slowly spilled over Hogsmeade, he started to think. It felt like cogs and wheels were turning, straining and creaking under the pressure. He had been with Voldemort, at Hogwarts. Then he had been at King’s Cross with Dumbledore. Then he had been lying in the mud, alone. He had died, and he had chosen to return to the living. Those memories were coming back to him, vague and covered in fog. He could detect no signs from the village that there was a battle fiercely raging nearby. If anything, it seemed like a disappointingly normal day. 

He was also haunted by the fuzzy memories of Snape and Dumbledore that he was certain he had actually seen, not hallucinated. Both were dead, he’d seen both of them die so he had no real doubt about that. He had seen that scene before, in a Pensieve. Dumbledore had been the kind of old that is almost ageless for so long that he looked the same as he always had to Harry, but Snape had looked younger. Young, like he had been in the memories he gave Harry, spilling out of him along with his blood as he died. Two men who had shaped the battle against Voldemort to give him a chance of victory, both dying in front of his eyes. 

It didn’t quite add up, though Harry wondered if that was because thinking felt rather akin to wading through dark sludge. He had wanted to go back to the living, to his friends, to defeat Voldemort. He wasn’t certain if he was where he intended to be. Had there been a battle raging at the school, would life at Hogsmeade really be continuing so much like normal? Would people so causally step over his prostrate body? He imagined that they would have recognised him, as everyone always seemed to do, though whether friend or foe it was always hard to tell. Dismissal was unusual, almost as if he was no-one and nothing. As if Harry Potter was a name that meant nothing, a face that had no relevance. He had a sinking suspicion, that he hoped was just him jumping to stupid conclusions. He had done that on a few occasions, making assumptions that turned out to be entirely incorrect once presented with the full range of facts. He was wondering if he had gone back, only not just back to the living, but back in time. He had seen Dumbledore and Snape, reenacting a scene that had happened a long time ago, when he knew them to have died.

He knew he would eventually have to stand, to draw himself up and find a shop that sold a newspaper to check. It would be dangerous to ask anyone, he had spent the last year hiding and constantly on the run. He was wary of everyone. He needed to check his conclusions. But first he knew he needed to be able to stand. He hated the sensation of being so weak. He wondered if it was the results of having been technically dead, or if it was a combination of that and the time travel he might have accidentally done. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to be true. On the one hand, if he had died, his corpse been unceremoniously dumped in the mud by Death Eaters and then returned to life, then that presumed that he was too late and that Voldemort had won. He also found it faintly unbelievable that after so much effort to kill him, Voldemort would have just discarded his dead body so easily, he imagined that there was more likely to have been a parading of his corpse and Voldemort visually demonstrating to all his enemies that Harry was dead. Had he been transported through time, then he was alone in the world and had no idea what he should do. He felt a sharp pang, wishing that Ron and Hermione at the very least were there to provide support and insight. If he had gone back in time, how would he ever survive alone, he wondered.

With a groan, he pulled himself to his feet. He swayed there for a moment, clinging to the brick wall, before putting one foot in front of the other. He swayed precariously, but he managed to making it to the small corner shop where he poked his nose in. They sold the Daily Prophet, and he only needed a glance at that to confirm his fears. He stumbled back outside, and retched slightly, leaning feebly against the wall. He was back in time. He had witnessed Snape overhearing the prophecy during the night. All of his life, his actual life, was yet to come.

The prophecy made him start, suddenly remembering it. If he could stop Snape from telling Voldemort, he started thinking, but his thoughts ground to an abrupt halt. He had no idea where Snape was, where Voldemort was, and in his current condition he had little chance of stopping either of them from doing anything. He headed, painfully slowly, towards the Shrieking Shack. He wanted to be somewhere no one would disturb him, where he could sit in peace to tease through his thoughts alone as his strength recovered. He could feel it returning, slowly but surely. The Shack was almost always deserted, a reliable fact that stretched through time. 

He sat down on the ground beside it to take stock. He had been there not too long ago, as far as his memory told him, watching Nagini tear out Snape’s throat, watching him die. But that was the distant future. Nearly twenty years or so, a thought that seemed so surreal. It had been only yesterday. He wondered why he was back in time. It made no sense. How could he defeat Voldemort, when the moment for that was so far in the future. He had a brief moment of optimism, when he realised his parents must still be alive, that he might be able to save them. 

And then he felt it go. He had spent a year hunting down and destroying Horcruxes. They were all back, remade. The prospect of doing all that again, only alone, was soul-destroying. He wanted to save everyone he knew would die, to leap into action and be the hero he had always been, but he had grown wiser as he had grown up. He had walked to his death, calmly assured that it was necessary. They had orchestrated everything so that Voldemort could be defeated. He couldn’t risk changing anything, changing the outcomes so the Horcruxes wouldn’t be destroyed, so that they wouldn’t have the chance to defeat him once and for all. Even if that meant that he had to let Voldemort murder and torture innocent people, people he could save. Even if it meant he had to let his mother give her life only for Voldemort to rise again over a decade later. He was like Snape, like Dumbledore. Every fibre of his being had been devoted to defeating Voldemort for far too long for him to risk anything changing that, even if it meant he had to stand by and let everything he could prevent happen.

Time travel was tricky. He remembered Hermione talking about it. It had gone in one ear and our the other, as things often did, but he remembered the basics. The danger of changing things. If he changed things, he might risk the future, might accidentally hand Voldemort a victory. He wished he had Hermione, someone who knew more than him to provide advice. He was tempted to go to Dumbledore, to show him all his memories and let him deal with everything just like he had once done. But Dumbledore was imperfect, and only human. Harry doubted he could keep secrets from him, and at the same time feared telling him all the details of the future. A year ago, or even less, he might have rushed to the Headmaster’s Office, thrown himself begging at his feet to guide him and tell him what to do. But now he felt the responsibility to be his and his alone. Dumbledore had his role to play, and Harry had his. In the role Harry had, the responsibility he bore, Dumbledore was already dead, already gone, even though that would takes decades to come to pass. He felt a tinge of grief, but he had already mourned. It was something to keep in mind, but to start with he would figure things out on his own. He was the one back in time, he was the one who would defeat Voldemort. 

He paused slightly. He poked his scar. It seemed the same as it always had been. He wondered if the Horcurx that had been inside him for most of his life was gone. He wondered how to check something like that. He assumed it must be, but logic and magic didn’t always mix. Hadn’t Snape suggested something, once, a long time ago and yet something still to come. His riddle, protecting the Philosopher’s stone from agents of Voldemort, had been based around the idea that those raised in the magical world had very little grasp on something as simple as basic muggle logic. None of them had been expecting Voldemort to be there to solve it, assuming that it would be his loyal Death Eaters, consisting mostly of purebloods who dismissed muggles as inferior, the prime candidates for being unable to solve such a riddle. He wondered idly if Dumbledore would have been stumped by it, or Arthur Weasley for all his love of muggles. 

He wondered now how he could have missed the clear indication that Snape had been raised in the muggle world, that in so many ways their backgrounds had been so painfully similar. With hindsight, everything seemed so clear and obvious. He put it down to him being just a child, a naive eleven year old with little grasp on the complexities of the world. He had believed Snape to be an agent of Voldemort at that time too, just as he had allowed Snape to fool him again and again, always taking too much at face-value and only seeing the true depth after his death. A death that was still to come, twenty years down the line, in the building Harry leaned against, his thoughts circling just as time seemed to do.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is still set up. There has to be a lot of set up because Harry currently has nothing and probably doesn't really legally exist. There are so many practical issues to deal with, even though I imagine I'll invariably miss some.

By afternoon Harry felt steady enough on his feet to Apparate. He hadn’t eaten anything, and he wasn’t sure how long it had been since he had done so. Any such calculations were complicated by his previous meal having been nearly two decades in the future, before his death. He still felt woozy, a sensation that both made him unwilling to eat anything for risk of throwing it straight back up, as well as probably being in part caused by his lack of food.

He Apparated to Godric’s Hollow, which may not have been the wisest decision he had ever made. He wished he had his invisibility cloak, but it didn’t belong to him yet. James still had it, unless he had already given it to Dumbledore. Harry was vague on the details, they had always been too far in the past to ever effect him, until they suddenly became his present. Quietly, he creeped round the house that his parents lived in. It was still standing, a lovely little house that he could have grown up in. He hadn’t, and he knew he couldn’t change things so he did. It hurt, seeing the house still standing, a bright future ahead of the little family within, a future that would end abruptly. 

The garden was beautiful, the kind of idyllic cottage garden that turned up in magazines and artwork, the kind that burst with wild flowers in summer and suited snow in winter. From his vantage point, hidden away amongst the bushes aware that with the war on he was taking a stupid risk, he spied two figures. They were his parents, but they were arguing, voices raised though he was too far away to clearly catch what they were saying. He Apparated away, quickly, not wanting to watch. Not wanting to be caught or have to explain himself. Not wanting to risk making things worse. It was a brief foray into temptation, but that brief glance was all he needed to realise that it was probably best for him to stay far away. It felt like he was leaving his heart there, splinching himself as he went, though he knew it still beat in his chest. He might as well have torn it out and abandoned it on his parents’ doorstep.

He skulked in the men’s toilets in Euston Station. It was far enough away that any wizarding people on business to the Ministry, King’s Cross or Diagon Alley wouldn’t notice. He had nowhere really to go, had just wandered aimlessly in that direction from Kings Cross, the first place he had thought of to Apparate to. He looked at himself in the mirror. He did look remarkably like his father. Everyone had always commented on it. Now they were about the same age, so eyes aside they really did look startlingly similar. His choice of glasses didn’t help. He had stuck with the round frames partly out of a lack of interest in anything else and partly out of an attachment to the knowledge that they were the same style as the ones his father had once worn. He sighed. He would be recognised in the wizarding world as James, or at the very least related to him, which would make everything more complicated.

He looked thoughtfully at his face. He took his glasses off. His face became a blurred mess. He put them back on again. He had no idea if he looked less like his father without glasses, but he also knew that he couldn’t see anything without them. He considered the frames. He could buy different glasses, which might make him look slightly different, different enough that any similarities could be brushed off as chance. His hair too was similar to the style James had preferred. That was mainly because Harry had next to no interest in how his hair looked. In many ways, he found himself admitting that maybe he was more like Snape than anyone else, as he too clearly didn’t care much for minor details like hair styles. As far as Harry could tell, Snape had had the same hair style all his life, which seemed mostly to be focuses on it requiring as little effort as possible. Washing likewise seemed to be something that Snape did as rarely as possible, which only added to Harry’s impression that Snape had next to no interest in the world of hair styles.

His stomach growled. He had no money. He sighed, and looked at himself in the mirror again. He had his bank key, to the Potter vault at Gringotts, but he unfortunately was a bit too young to be making withdrawals. He wasn’t sure where the goblins stood on time travel and access to bank accounts. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to find out. The last time he had been to Gringotts he had been robbing them, after all. He looked at his face again. He looked like James Potter and had the key to the Potter vault. He studied his face speculatively. If he could fool them into thinking that he was James Potter, if they missed the tiny details that made him Harry rather than James, then he could withdraw some money. Not too much that it would be noticed, but enough that he could have something to live on. He needed to eat, even if nothing else. He had walked past a Cornish pasty place and had been tempted to use magic to rob the seller, but being arrested by the Aurors seemed like a very bad start to his new life in the past. It would definitely make his current situation even worse than it already was. He knew laws changed over the course of time, but he was pretty confident that using magic to steal was still illegal. He definitely hoped it was. It seemed like an important thing to him.

Besides, he reasoned. If he was refused he would know he didn’t look too much like James and therefore could just go on with his life, which probably would admittedly probably involve dying in a ditch of starvation, but it would be something. A silver lining to his mushroom cloud. If he did manage to withdraw money, then he would have money and with those he could buy himself a new pair of glasses and get a hair cut so he looked different enough to not be mistaken for his father. It might have been the lack of food talking, but he thought it was a decent plan. He was fairly desperate.

He stumbled his way to Diagon Alley, and taking a deep breath stepped into Gringotts. It was just how he remembered it, which was strange to think about seeing as he was remembering the future. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about the entire transaction going perfectly smoothly. He felt sick on the rides to and from the vault, but that was the only trouble he had. He exchanged some of the money for muggle currency, and shoved both shrunken sacks of gold into his pockets. Leaving, he felt a vague wave of relief wash over him. It had gone a lot better than the last time he had left Gringotts. He was glad they didn’t remember that, even if he did.

He sat on a bollard and ate a Cornish pasty. He made sure to eat slowly so it didn’t reappear again, though it took a lot of self control not to wolf the whole thing down in one go. He wondered if he smelt. He had been wearing the same robes for technically two decades, but backwards. In more realistic terms, he had spent the night in mud and vomit, and had yet to change. The cleaning spells had done wonders, but he still felt dirty. With money he at least had the option of buying some more clothing and also getting a cheap hotel room. He might have considered the Leaky Cauldron, but he didn’t want people wondering why James Potter was staying there, especially if anyone knew where James actually was. Accidentally causing marital strife between his parents seemed like a very bad idea. A muggle place would be better.

Once his Cornish pasty was eaten, he Apparated away, thinking somewhere that wasn’t London was probably a better option. He had only a passing knowledge of muggle geography, but he remembered vaguely a rather unimpressive town called Cokeworth that he had stayed in with the Dursleys, in the future and his past, when they had been trying to run away from the letters. It seemed about as non magical and simultaneously uninspiring as possible, so he went there. His memories were faint, and based on a place ten years yet to come, but it was good enough. If the Dursleys had gone there to try to escape from the Hogwarts letters, then he could be fairly confident that there was nothing magical there. The fact that he was taking inspiration from the Dursleys on how to avoid magic would have worried him slightly, if literally all other aspects of the situation weren’t taking priority in his mind. 

He booked a room in a hotel. It was not the one he had stayed at before with the Dursleys, but a cheaper, even more miserable one. He didn’t care. He just wanted a bed. Even though it was still ridiculously early, he slept. He wasn’t sure if it was time travel or dying that had worn him out so much, or a combination of the two. All he knew was how he felt and the unhelpful knowledge that it was a question no one was going to be able to answer. People didn’t normally come back from the dead or travel back nearly two decades, let alone die only to wake up in the past. Unique things tended to happen to him, so in some ways he wondered if he should just be used to it, but at the same time he felt like he had the right to be confused. Regardless, he was grateful to sink into the bed. He was still fully clothed, and he knew that he had a lot to do the next day, but that was tomorrow’s problem.

When morning came, he really regretted not having bought at least a change of clothes. His clothes, changed occasionally throughout the previous day to resemble either magical robes or muggle clothes depending on the circumstance, had now been slept in twice. He was incredibly glad to be able to have a shower, even if there did seem to be a slight hint of mould and the fact that the hot water was a bit dodgy. It felt good to be clean. To wash off the grime of the final battle, which wouldn’t happen for a long time. It felt good to wash himself of the sensation of lying in the mud, of being sick. Of the blood of the dying and the dead, some of whom weren’t even born yet. It felt good to feel clean.

It felt less good to put back on the same clothes, even after thoroughly spelling them clean. Buying some new clothing shot to the top of his list of things to do. He ate the rubbish breakfast that was provided, aware that a nicer hotel would have had a nicer breakfast. He didn’t care. He was grateful for mediocre cereal and tea, stuff that he could get for himself without having to deal with anyone. He didn’t want cheerful conversation requiring him to make up stories, lies that he would then forget. He preferred the complete lack of customer service that the hotel provided, though it probably had never thought to advertise itself as a place that literally didn’t care about its customers in the slightest. 

Cokeworth had a not particularly impressive city centre around the railway station, which had a BHS. He went in there for basics such as pants and socks, as well as a pack of cheap T-shirts. He then went into the wide range of charity shops that liberally littered the streets for other clothes, wondering if he looked like a young man buying everything he might need for a new life. If he did, no one seemed to notice. He called in to Boots to buy a toothbrush, and with his new purchases returned to his hotel room. It hadn’t been cleaned, a service that was clearly not offered. He was quite grateful. He brushed his teeth, feeling far more enjoyment at the sensation of having clean teeth than he had ever imagine he would, and changed into some clean clothes. He glanced at himself in the slightly cracked mirror. He looked like a normal muggle, just one with a slightly unusual scar. He poked his scar again. It seemed slightly faded, less visibly angry than it had his entire life. Maybe that was a sign that the Horcrux was gone. He hoped so.

With a deep breath, he headed out again, for the slight more difficult job of altering his appearance to resemble his father less. His first port of call was the opticians, where he had his eyes tested and chose different frames for his glasses. The shop assistant was helpful if faintly disinterested, leaving him mostly to his own devices. To his annoyance, glasses had to be made, so he had to order them, pay far more than he wanted and ultimately wait until the next week for his new glasses. In some ways it served as a reminder why he had spent so little effort on muggle glasses thus far in his life. 

Afterwards he went to the cheapest hairdresser he could find, where he asked for a haircut that he immediately regretted. He’d never really paid much attention to his hair, in general. It was just something that happened on top of his head, with the nice bonus of flopping down to cover his scar. The scar he still wanted to cover, so his only instructions to the cheerful hairdresser had been that he wanted it covered and that he wanted to look entirely different. He maybe should have added some more details into his desires, but he had only the most limited experience with hairdressers. For most of his childhood he had hated having his hair cut, mainly because it was always done by Petunia who hated both him and the idea of spending money on him. He had never been given any option of giving preferences for those haircuts, and he probably would have started with the detail of really not liking the way she wielded scissors around his ears. Once starting at Hogwarts things had changed, but it had never been much of a priority to have his hair cut. Wizards had a tendency towards long hair, which could be because they tended to spend their teenage years in a castle a very long way away from regular haircuts.

His hair had always been a bit of an unruly mess, which he was ultimately alright with. He had given the hairdresser free range, and the style that resulted was admittedly very different to the one he had always just had, mainly because it involved nothing more complicated than simply having hair. While it was similar to the James’s hairstyle, Harry realised that his father had probably put a little more thought and effort into it than he had. The end result was the same, messy black hair that merely highlighted the similarities of their facial structure. The glasses cemented the impression of similar enough to be mistaken for each other. Harry’s new haircut changed everything.

The sides and back had been almost entirely shaved, leaving just a hint of black stubble. The hair on the very top of his head, however, was left long and the hairdresser was quite pleased with the amount of volume it had. Harry took his word for it. It looked to him to be far more floofy than hair that was connected to the semi-shaved section had any right being, but Harry had to admit he knew next to nothing about hair. It was very far down his list of priorities, lower than homework had been and definitely lower than Voldemort. He certainly looked different. With new glasses he would be almost like a new person, though that might also be because he had never changed his style before. Like everything else in his life, it was of lesser importance than Voldemort. In some ways it was sad to realise that his whole life had effectively revolved around Voldemort, and that when he finally believed himself to be nearly free he had merely ended up in a kind of limbo. His adult life too would revolve around Voldemort, the war drawn out across time and his life.

He had been robbed of any chance of a happy childhood, not only by Voldemort murdering his parents but also by Dumbledore sending him to the Dursleys for protection. He could understand the logic, the bloodward trumping all other problems, but it meant that his childhood had been with a family who did not love him. Virtually every year he had spent at Hogwarts had too ended up being overshadowed by Voldemort in some shape or form. Even when he did not actually materialise, in his third year, the fact that everyone had believed Sirius to be a Death Eater loyal to Voldemort and the persistent presence of the Dementors had still ensured that his effect was felt. 

He felt his resolve waver for a moment at the thought of Sirius. He hadn’t wanted to but he had come to terms with the death of his godfather, but now he was no longer dead. He would die, and Harry had the power to save him. Before that, his life would be destroyed, sent to Azkaban to rot. Harry could prevent that too, but at the same time he could do nothing. He could feel his heart clenching, tearing itself in two. More than anything he desperately wanted to intervene, to give his parents a chance at life, to give himself a happy childhood. To save Sirius from a fate worse than death and then his actual death. But he couldn’t risk all their suffering, all their deaths and sacrifices, including the miseries of his own life, his own ultimate death, he couldn’t risk that any of it had been in vain. Even if it was all still to happen, still the future yet to come. It had still happened for him, and that had led to the destruction of all of Voldemort’s Horcruxes, the crucial detail allowing the prophecy to be fulfilled. 

He paid for the haircut, wandering aimlessly through the uninspiring town. He sat by a river that provided a view, though it was neither scenic nor pretty. It merely was. Something in front of his eyes. It could have been anything, he would have stared blankly at a wall just as willingly. He was lost in thought. He wished Hermione was there with him, to help him and provide guidance. He wished he could ask Dumbledore, but he had no way of getting his advice without having to explain everything. He wished he knew why he was back in time, what purpose it could possibly serve.

He had done barely nothing, but he was still tired. He ate a rubbish sandwich from a supermarket, that wasn’t worth the money he paid for it. Now that he had a limited amount of money and no concrete idea of what to do with the rest of his life, he was starting to feel that way about pretty much everything. As a child, the Dursleys had been the ones to deal with spending money on him, which they had mostly avoided. As a teenager, he had had access to the entire Potter vault, riches beyond his wildest dreams, so had never really worried about money. Now he only had what he had withdrawn, and he feared it would run out. He would have to get a job, but what he couldn’t even begin to wonder. He had told McGongall that he wanted to be an Auror. Now he was left entirely unsure if that was possible. Not only did he have none of the required NEWTs, he also lacked a legal identity or explanation why he hadn’t gone to Hogwarts, as the real explanation of time travel would bring him back to his constant problem. He needed to find somewhere to live, too. He couldn’t continue to stay at a crap hotel in Cokeworth for the next twenty years. He didn’t particularly want to return to camping out in the wilderness, not for twenty years with no company or equipment.

Lacking anything better to do, he returned to the hotel. He hoped he would recover his strength soon, that the persistent exhaustion would fade quickly. No matter what, he knew that he had a week until he could pick up his new glasses. He curled up in the bed that hadn’t been made by the hotel staff. He hoped at least that the sheets were washed in between guests. He would give himself a week to recover and think up a plan, decide what to do. Once he had his new glasses, he would hopefully be ready to start a new life. He just needed to figure out all the details, his purpose and everything else.


	3. Chapter 3

The only real conclusion he came to over the week it took his new glasses to arrive was that Cokeworth was an utter dump. The whole town seemed old, but not in a quaint way. It seemed like it must have been old and worn when it had been newly built, the tiredness and apathy built into the brickworks. The buildings tended towards ugly, the city planning having done nothing but exacerbate that impression. The weather seemed grey. It didn’t rain excessively, it didn’t do anything particularly unpleasant, it just seemed mediocre like the town. The river that ran through it was polluted and sluggish. The shops left a lot to be desired.

With his new glasses, he looked almost like a new person. He wouldn’t have fooled anyone who knew him, but there was no one who knew him. He was utterly alone in the world, despite having still living parents and a godfather. He tried not to think about that too much. The people who would recognise him, see past the new hair style and different frames to see the same old Harry beneath, they wouldn’t know him for decades yet to come. It was disheartening, but it also served to provide a sense of relief. He didn’t need to go to drastic measures, as no one had ever met him before.

He was starting to feel like a ghost, like someone who didn’t really exist. It was partially due to the lack of real human contact. It was also partly due to the amount of thinking he had been doing about the nature of reality and time travel. His only real experience with time travel until his untimely death had been with Hermione, in his third year, to save Buckbeak. Hermione would have ordinarily been his first port of call with knotty issues of magical theory, especially as she had the experience of using the time turner, but he wasn’t even sure if she had been born yet. Even if she had, an infant was unlikely to be much help. So he was having to make do with his own brain. 

He remembered that when he’d gone back with Hermione they had been instructed not to change anything other than the tiny details they had been sent back to alter. Even those weren’t actually alterations, as such. After all, the sound of the axe hitting what they had assumed was Buckbeak had occurred when McNair discovered that Buckbeak was gone, striking the pumpkin out of frustration. Likewise, Harry had sprung forth to dispel the Dementors and save them all, but he had also seen himself do that. That seemed to be how time worked, that realistically as far as his memories were concerned they already contained the effects of him being in the past, because he always had been. He had been born into a world in which he had already travelled into the past, he had grown up in a world where somewhere there was a Harry Potter living. Everything that would happen to him had already happened. If he thought about it too much it made his brain hurt, so he tried to just accept that he was where he was and had to make the best of it. He had to ensure that he survived until he died, so that he could defeat Voldemort. It was not a plan of action that made much sense to him. But he remembered vaguely Hermione mentioning the dangers of people accidentally causing their own deaths because of travelling through time and doing things like meeting themselves. Until then, he had to focus on the practical realities of life.

He had realised that to get a job, even a low paid, casual muggle one, required him to have somewhere to live. To have somewhere to live, he needed a job of some kind to pay the bills. Somewhere in there, he needed to find a solution. He was starting to sink into despair. At least his strength had returned. Unfortunately it had brought with it his appetite, which while theoretically being a good thing also meant that his financial worries were starting to eat away at the back of his mind even more. He still had a reasonable amount of money, shoved in a sock and spelled to be kept safe. He couldn’t open a bank account without some legal proof of existence or an address. Somehow, being from the future and temporarily living in a really mediocre hotel in Cokeworth did not strike him as the kind of information that would get him a muggle bank account. Gringotts would be even more of a headache. So he used a sock.

He’d gone back to BHS for some more socks, as one whole pair was out of action due to them being reassigned duty as his bank account rather than their intended purpose of keeping his feet warm. He had received some strange looks, as he had been lost in thought about time travel and time turners, standing in the aisle with a multi pack of men’s socks in his hands. It had occurred to him, a flash of inspiration probably not caused by underwear but he wasn’t ruling it out, that if murder existed in the wizarding world then it probably wasn’t really possible to change things by time travel. The Ministry had both Aurors and time turners, after all, and yet when people were murdered they stayed dead. If it was easy enough to just go back a short while and save people then there would logically be an entire devision dedicated to nipping back in time to prevent murders and arrest people before they actually did the killing. But still people were murdered. The Longbottoms were tortured to the point of incurable insanity. The culprits were arrested. Surely, if people could go back in time and change things then they would, so maybe the only real conclusion was that it was simply not possible. He didn’t have a great deal of faith in the Ministry, but he did feel that there would surely be some kind of outcry in the Longbottom’s case at the very least, if something like that could easily be undone with time travel.

Grimly, he went to the pub. He was technically too young to drink, but it didn’t seem like the kind of place where anyone cared. He wasn’t intending to drink much. He was unused to alcohol as well as being unwilling to spend money. He had mostly been eating discounted sandwiches, so blowing all his cash on a wild night out was not in his plans. He wasn’t even sure if he liked beer, but he ordered a half pint anyway. In many ways, he was merely there to witness social interaction even if he thought it unlikely he would experience any himself. Maybe it would inspire him with what to do. He still had time to change his mind, after all. That was the one thing he kept reminding himself. At any moment he could run to Dumbledore, tell him everything, change history and save everyone who had died. If that was possible. He might accidentally cause reality to implode or his own death, so he was fairly was certain he wouldn’t be doing anything dramatic. The more he thought of it, the more precious the sacrifices everyone had made seemed. He wasn’t sure what to do with the information in his brain, with all his knowledge of the future, just that it didn’t seem like it was something that should spill from his mouth without due consideration.

He sipped his beer, slowly. He wanted it to last. He also wasn’t certain if he liked it, even after tasting it. It was different from butterbeer, something that should probably have been obvious but had never actually occurred to him. He had been too preoccupied with Voldemort and the whole not dying thing to really pay much attention to doing things like underage drinking. It had taken him actually dying to start doing so. He felt that that was possibly a slightly depressing thought, as well as one that most people couldn’t have. He had survived Avada Kedavara as a baby, something still to happen, which no one else had ever done before. He had finally managed to one-up himself, by coming back from the dead, only no one knew because he had also managed to travel back in time. It seemed like the kind of thing that only ever happened to him. He could almost imagine Snape’s reaction saying as much. 

He was glumly thinking of Snape, wondering if he had already passed on the details of the prophecy and whether he was regretting it yet, when he realised he was also staring at him. Across the room, also in a secluded corner silently drinking beer alone, Snape sat entirely oblivious to Harry’s gaze. Harry had never seen him in muggle clothing before, though there was nothing particularly impressive about his attire. It was black and effectively the same as the clothes worn by pretty much all the men in the pub. Unlike Harry, he was drinking a full pint, and Harry suspected that it might not be his first ever. Harry frowned, trying to calculate. He knew that Snape was still older than him, but not by anything like as much as he had been when he died. When they both died, a thought that was somewhat surreal. A week ago both of them had died on the same day, and now they were drinking beer in separate corners of a grotty pub in a run down town. It almost seemed like fate, but Harry wasn’t sure what fate could possibly mean by it. Fate was probably drunk, he thought grumpily.

He had tried to wrack his brains for some kind of meaning. He wondered if he was missing something, but as far as he could tell there was no hint before his arrival in the past that that was where he would end up. He had chosen to come back to life, so that he would be able to continue fighting Voldemort. As far as he’d been aware, the choices presented to him had been to return to his body on the battlefield or to pass on to whatever happened after death. At no point had the option of time travel been mentioned. Had it been, Harry doubted he would have taken it. He thought that they were in a pretty good position, or more accurately that he had been in a pretty good position when it came to finishing Voldemort off for good. It was the closest the Light had been since Voldemort created his first Horcrux, which was as far as Harry was concerned an important point. Now all those painstakingly destroyed Horcruxes were for the most part back in existence. Only now he had no idea where they were or how he would even begin to find them.

Some of them hadn’t even been created yet. The one in his head hadn’t been created yet, for starters. He wasn’t entirely sure about the others. He had wracked his brain somewhat for when and where the others had been made, but he’d never really known that sort of information. He never thought he’d need to know anything other than the specific knowledge for when he had been seeking them out and destroying them. He wasn’t sure how he would destroy them even if he could find them. The Chamber hadn’t been opened yet, which meant the Basilisk hadn’t been killed, so its fang was not an option. He had a brief moment of bleak amusement as he pictured the look on Dumbledore’s face should he chose to waltz up to Hogwarts and inform him that it was vitally important that he just quickly opened the Chamber of Secrets. Somehow he didn’t feel that it would go down too well. Then there was the issue of Gryffindor’s Sword. He’d got that from the Sorting Hat, by being brave and yet entirely helpless as a mere twelve year old facing the Basilisk. He had no idea how else he might get his hands on it. Somehow he didn’t think that opening the Chamber and taking on the Basilisk with nothing more than the Sorting Hat would quite do it. That probably wouldn’t count as Gryffindor brave, rather as reckless or maybe insane. Possibly even an attempt at Slytherin cunning, gambling on recreating the same circumstances as the first time. Only the only real way to do that was to simply let the younger Harry do his best. He had survived, it was Ginny who had suffered more in some ways. 

His life was ultimately on the line too. He assumed Voldemort had already heard the Prophecy, though once again asking was probably not a great plan. He could saunter across the pub and literally ask Snape, but he couldn’t picture than ending in a way that didn’t involve Harry being hexed. If he was lucky, he would only be hexed, if he wasn’t then it would probably be even worse. So presumably Voldemort would attempt to kill him. He knew the date for that at least. He wondered if he changed anything, if by attempting to make things better he might not accidentally change the situation and cause his own death. Then Voldemort would win and he’d be at a loss as to what to do. He also wasn’t entirely sure how his previous life in the future connected to his current present. If the baby Harry died, would that just lead to baby Harry being dead or would the Harry who had grown up to be sent back in time die too? He wished he knew the answer. He really didn’t want to accidentally cause the death of himself. He didn’t want to cause the deaths of any babies at all if he could possibly help it. He suspected that that was a really low bar to have set himself. And yet, logically, both baby Harry and baby Neville were in the firing range. 

He could tell people that they were being targeted. But Dumbledore knew that anyway. Dumbledore had always known that. That alone made him hesitate when it came to rushing to Hogwarts to the old wizard. The Longbottoms had known they were targets and they had been attacked. He didn’t even know the full details of the attack, nothing more than a vague outline. If he had known the date he might have been able to do something, but as things stood it was ultimately useless knowledge. Nothing more than what the Order of the Phoenix would know, that Voldemort and the Death Eaters were targeting the Longbottoms because they believed Neville might be the Chosen One.

At least he knew more about when Voldemort had killed his parents. Realistically, he could expose Peter Pettigrew as a traitor. But he didn’t know if he was a traitor yet, which was frustrating. At no point had Peter ever bothered to mention the exact date or even the vague time frame in which he had switched sides. It was one of those details that had never mattered to Harry before. But if Peter wasn’t the Secret Keeper, then it would likely fall to Sirius, who had proudly stated that he would rather be tortured to insanity rather than give up his secret. Harry wasn’t entirely certain if he liked the sound of that. 

He didn’t even have any useful knowledge, which was in some ways impossible for him to believe. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Dumbledore, as such. Dumbledore had done some incredible, important things. He was someone to be looked up to. But he was also flawed and his priorities were not necessarily the same as Harry’s.

His eyes went back to Snape, who had finished his beer. Harry had also finished his beer, which seemed to be fate. Harry hated fate. Fate was always a bad thing. He blamed fate for a lot of things. He had been thinking of Snape when he made his choice, he remembered. He felt a flash of bad temper at that, at the way in which Snape seemed to exist throughout every part of his life as a dark, ominous presence. He’d done a lot of important things, Harry knew that. He had saved Harry’s life a lot of times too, always hidden away in the shadows. Always alone and miserable. Harry had felt sadness at that, a sense of a lost connection, a realisation that came after Snape’s death and formed fully into the realisation of regret after his own.

“Fuck,” he said under his breath. He had thought of Snape as he went back towards life. He had thought about what a shame it was that Snape had been alone, had given up so much of his life and ultimately died for the cause of bringing down Voldemort. He had almost absentmindedly wished there had been someone there for the man, a friend to take the place of his mother. He groaned. Had he really been sent back to the past to be friends with Snape because he’d idly had a thought like that. It was ridiculous, and yet the one thing he had learnt over his years at Hogwarts was that ultimately, magic was stupid. It was illogical and silly. It picked up on small thoughts and made them catastrophic disasters. It made perfect sense and Harry hated it.

Snape had expressed something similar, he vaguely recalled. In his first year, the logic puzzle had been designed to completely confuse anyone without the experience of being raised in the muggle world, as so few of those in the magical world had any comprehension of logic. Harry had missed it then, but now he thought of it that was a very dismissive attitude towards the entire wizarding world. It was definitely not the attitude of a pureblood, who believed in the superiority of purebloods.

He glared across the room at Snape, who was luckily entirely oblivious. He was standing up to go, clearly having had as little intention as Harry of being social, though possibly with a greater experience of muggle pubs. What Harry did know was that he had Snape in his sights and more alcohol in his blood stream than he was accustomed to. Not that he was really used to any alcohol. Warfare really interfered with any potential for teenage rebellion and drinking that he might otherwise have entertained. Luckily, he was well accustomed to stealth, so he had no trouble slinking out the pub after Snape. Snape was younger than the man Harry had known. His teacher would probably have caught him. This Snape walked through the streets of Cokeworth seemingly oblivious.

It made perfect sense to Harry that Snape might wish to ignore his surroundings entirely. It seemed like the best thing to do to Cokeworth. It somehow managed to make grey misery a design feature in all the buildings, even the relatively nice ones. Harry wouldn’t have been surprised had Snape Apparated away, and yet at the same time he still hadn’t quite managed to work his mind around the question as to why Snape was in a dump like Cokeworth having a pint. He hadn’t even figured out why he was still in Cokeworth, which was even worse as he was theoretically the one in control of doing the thinking within his own mind.

Snape led him, admittedly unintentionally, through the streets, apparently knowing exactly where he was going. Round about the moment that Harry realised that he had probably gone and got himself lost, an issue that luckily could be solved by a quick Apparation back to the town centre, he realised that the surroundings were starting to look familiar. It took him a few seconds to place quite where it was he had seen the houses before, but when he did he nearly stopped dead. He had seen the playground Snape had just walked past in Snape’s memories. It was the playground where his mother and Snape had been children. The facts added together to provide Harry with a conclusion that once he thought of made perfect sense. He had somehow managed to end up in Snape’s hometown, the place where he had grown up and seemingly still lived.

He watched, probably in a way that would have had a neighbourhood with a passionate neighbourhood watch scheme in place calling the police, as Snape unlocked the door of one of the houses on the street which after much searching he would eventually discover was called Spinner’s End. The sign was old and partially hidden by some very ugly ivy, making it a perfect fit for everything he had seen of Cokeworth so far. He made a mental note of the house number. A part of him was tempted to knock on the door, but he wasn’t sure what to say. “Hi, I followed you back from the pub” somehow didn’t strike Harry as a great way to ensure he lived through the night.

He had tomorrow.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things will perk up in a bit, mainly once Harry has a bit more to do with himself apart from think.   
> Also, Severus actually speaks next chapter.

When the next day came, Harry felt more assured in himself. Nothing had changed and nothing had been solved. But he was in the same town as Snape, and somehow that seemed important. It really did seem like fate. Maybe even Fate with a capital F. He’d gone back in time thinking of Snape and he’d ended up near Snape.

He would like to walk up to his parents and get to know them, knowing that they would presumably die in the near future. But he couldn’t exactly turn up on their doorstep, not with a war on. That was an operation that would require more planning. He also didn’t know them well enough to know how they would react. Snape he at least vaguely knew. He could engineer some kind of coincidental meeting, if he was patient enough. Or he could walk down to Spinner’s End and knock on his door. Harry knew where his strengths lay. Maybe had he let the Sorting Hat place him in Slytherin, under Snape’s watchful eye, he might have developed that kind of ability. But he had opted for Gryffindor, and the straightforward method was the one ultimately considered preferable in that House. 

It took him a few attempts to make it to Spinner’s End, as he hadn’t been paying full attention the night before. His focus had been on the man in front of him, not the route they had taken. But he persevered and managed to find himself on the corner. He skulked for a while, considering his options. Daylight did not improve Spinner’s End. In many ways, it made it even worse as all the flaws that the shadows of night had kindly hidden were now more apparent. He wondered if it would be possible to rent or buy any of the houses. It seemed like they would be cheap. He wasn’t certain if he hated himself enough to willingly live there though.

Contacting Snape and somehow becoming acquaintances with him seemed like a good idea though. Harry was however scraping the barrel on ideas. The problem, or at least one of the problems, because realistically everything was a problem, was that he had never really managed to hit it off with Snape before. In fact, he could quite honestly describe their entire previous relationship as them not having hit it off at all, unless instant hatred counted. Luckily, Snape was unaware of this background, as it hadn’t happened to him yet. But Harry felt that he could act maturely and use his previous experience to learn how to make Snape at the very least not hate him. Or at least, so he hoped. He could almost hear Snape’s voice in his head, sneering at his arrogance for making such a presumption. It wasn’t in any way, shape or form helpful. 

Snape had always been annoyed with him because Harry had often lied. This was in part because Snape tended to be a dick and also because Harry had more often than not suspected him as being in cahoots with Voldemort, a suspicion that was merely heightened by the fact that Snape tended to be a dick. Harry had never known why it was that Snape had never believed his lies. Admittedly the fact that he had spent his entire time at Hogwarts lying to Snape’s face and expecting to get away with it probably didn’t reflect that well on him, but that was in the past now. Or, future. Harry was still confused about how to think about these things. It was either because Harry was an awful liar, which Harry doubted as he’d always managed to lie convincingly to other people, another point that now he thought about it didn’t exactly mark him out for student of the century, or that Snape had read his mind. That he knew was entirely possible, which would have explained why Snape was so regularly annoyed at Harry’s lies. Apart from the Roonil Wazlib one. That one was just plain bad. Even he would admit that it was the worst lie he’d ever attempted in his life. No wonder Snape had been so unimpressed. That had not been his finest moment by any means.

Snape disliked it when people lied to him, that much was clear. Harry could understand that. He hated it when people hid things from him, especially adults lying to him for his own good. There was something vaguely hypocritical in the whole situation that he chose not to think about too much, about the way in which his teenage years had been a strange balance of adults lying to him for his own good and him lying right back at them.

Sadly, Harry didn’t feel like any of this gave him much actual, concrete help as to what to do. He walked up and down the street, in a way that probably looked faintly shady to anyone who might be observing. But it was Snape he was in the same city as, by some strange coincidence that made Harry suspicious. He knew, with absolute confidence that Snape was ultimately on his side as Dumbledore’s most trusted and loyal soldier. He admittedly wasn’t entirely certain when that would happen, except that it would start some time between the point when Snape had overheard the Prophecy, an event that Harry had just recently witnessed, and his parents’ deaths. He also had a pretty good idea of the relationships that Snape had, mainly because as far as he could tell there were effectively none. A lone man who would be the most reliable member of the Order, even if he wasn’t yet. To Harry, that seemed like the best first test, the best person to approach and try to integrate himself gently into the wizarding world. To try and figure things out.

Besides, he couldn’t help but think, if he could somehow get on Snape’s good side then it would be effectively a miracle. If he could do that then he could do pretty much anything. If he couldn’t then he wasn’t exactly losing anything he had previously had. To approach those he had known in his previous life was a greater emotional risk. If he could explain to them that he was from the future, and have them believe him, then maybe they could be friends but at the same time he couldn’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t be strangely disconcerting for them. He wanted to be their friends again, wanted to get to know the younger Sirius and Remus that he knew must be somewhere, just as he wanted to get to know his parents. But there was a war on, mistrust was running high. He couldn’t just knock on their doors and expect everything to flow smoothly. He wondered if he would feel grief and loss when he looked into their faces, seeing something familiar and receiving nothing but a blank gaze lacking recognition. 

At least with Snape, it was a muggle town and being unknown to him meant that he was a stranger rather than a boy the man had once hated, would hate. And yet, Snape would also risk his life again and again for Harry, so Harry was a bit unsure exactly what that really meant. So Harry paced up and down Spinner’s End, delaying the inevitable. He had already made his decision. He was just trying to do as Snape had always wanted him to do, and was thinking it through. Harry was aware that Snape probably wanted the decision to be made after the thinking part, but as far as Harry was concerned the fact that he was thinking deserved some praise at least.

Fed up with himself, and annoyed at Snape for being the cause of his irritation, even if the man was in actual fact entirely innocent and utterly unaware that Harry even existed, Harry stomped up to the front door. He had no idea if Snape lived alone, with the faintly awful parents Harry had seen from the brief glimpses of his childhood, or with an entire contingent of Death Eaters. The Death Eaters option seemed unlikely, as they mostly seemed like the sort that would rather die than spend any time in a place as dreary and muggle as Cokeworth, but he wasn’t really certain what kind of living conditions were common for Death Eaters. He rarely had much in the way of conversation with them, as generally in his experience they tended to be trying to kill him. He raised his hand, brave as the Gryffindor he had always prided himself on being, and knocked. As if it was fated to be, the door opened.

Harry expected Snape, yet at the same time he found it totally unexpected, catching him completely off guard. It shot him back, sharply and suddenly, to the events of barely a week ago, though it still lay years in the future. He found himself staring into black eyes, and he couldn’t shake the overpowering memory of the last time he had looked into those eyes as the life seemed to drain from them, fading before him. He wasn’t sure if he had ever been so close to Snape before that moment, if he had it had been a brief spell where something else was the focus, Occlumency or Harry’s ineptitude in class, rather than the two of them sharing eye contact for almost personal reasons. Yet here he was, staring into familiar black eyes once more alive in front of him, only in a younger face. It rocked Harry to the core, even though he expected it, even though he had consciously made the decision to knock on the door expecting Snape to open it.

“I’m from the future,” he said without much inflection or thought, the words spilling forth naturally.

Snape gave him an incredulous look, one which he would perfect as he aged and which Harry had been on the receiving end of enough times to recognise, even if it was still a work in process. In many ways, he had to admit it was probably deserved. It wasn’t exactly the greatest introduction that Harry could have chosen, as it was somewhat unbelievable and rather unlikely.

Slowly but surely, the door closed. Harry found himself looking at the door, paint peeling to reveal the old wood beneath. He sighed, feeling exhausted. He saw the yellowing lace curtain covering the window facing the road flick from the corner of his eye, catching a glimpse of Snape’s face peering through the dirty glass. His expression, from what Harry could tell, seemed to suggest that he thought Harry was a dangerous lunatic who had accidentally wandered onto his doorstep. 

Slowly, Harry turned and walked away, back down the street. He wandered slightly vaguely, a meandering drunkenness that brought him back to the playground he had passed the night before. It didn’t look particularly impressive in the daylight. He had mostly ignored it on his way to Snape’s house, noting it merely as a landmark to help him orientate himself, but now he went into the playground for lack of anything better to do. He felt shaken to his core, unwilling to go back to the unwelcoming hotel room he had been sleeping in but utterly lost as to what to do.

He sat down on one of the swings, the other being unavailable for general use. Someone, he assumed local teenagers, had wrapped the chain of the swing around the top pole, so the swing now hung above Harry’s head. The other swing was higher than it was supposed to be, also wrapped around the top pole, but Harry was quite happy for that fact. It meant that it was conveniently a comfortable height for him to sit on, though he imagined it was less fantastic for any bona fide children who might want to use it. 

As Harry sat, a gloomy cloud which fit in with the general grey of Cokeworth, children came and played on the slide. For a moment he felt a flash of envy. He had been a child once, but he had never played in playgrounds with friends. His childhood had been a fairly miserable one, living with relatives that disliked him. Always unloved, though his mother had loved him so much that she had died for him. He hadn’t known that as a child, and even though it warmed him to know it now it didn’t change the fact that he had lived a childhood devoid of love. Nothing could ever change the memory of that childhood. It could grown distant with time, it could be eased by the love of the family he built for himself with the friends he had made, but his childhood remained the one he had lived.

He had never even had friends until he boarded the train to Hogwarts, though the moment he thought that he felt a stab of guilt. Technically he had had Hagrid, though he didn’t predate Ron by much. Alone and unwanted. He felt a sharp flurry of jealousy, for the least likely person of all. At least Snape had had a friend before going to Hogwarts. Snape had had his mother, been best friends with Lily. They had boarded the Hogwarts Express together, whereas he had boarded it alone. He knew that Snape had been bullied mercilessly by the Marauders, including the father he had once looked up to so much. An uncomfortable truth. Bullied by the adult men that he had for a while considered people to admire, though they were as imperfect as any other human being. The friendship had ended, Lily and Snape had parted ways and Snape had been left alone. He too had been a product of an unloving household, as far as Harry could tell. Not a person to envy, really. Though maybe, Harry thought, someone to empathise with. But watching the children he couldn’t help but envy him.

Snape had played with a friend as a child, just as the children now spinning on the roundabout were playing with their friends. The kind of thing that children were supposed to do. Even if he’d had a horrible home to return to after playing, at least he had been able to escape to the outside world and revel in the kindness of his friend. Snape may have had a miserable future ahead of him, but arguably so had Harry when he’d been a child. A child without friends who went to Hogwarts and had his life taken over by the threat of Voldemort, slowly but surely. Snape was the same in a way, but at least he’d had that first friend earlier. 

Harry knew that he was being unfair. He knew that he was being completely unreasonable, boiling with rage and grief as he watched children playing innocently. It was easier to think of Snape, and it had always been easier to hate him than to not. Because if he stopped thinking of Snape, he would think of friendship, and then he would lose himself in despair.

He had made a life for himself, surrounded himself by friends. He had had Ron and Hermione, two people that meant the world to him. They had had their differences, argued and made up, but they were friends forged in the heat of battle. People he could trust. People he loved beyond all reason. And along with them there were his other friends. There was Ginny, so precious to him. Luna, strange but endearing. Neville, who had grown from the timid boy that everyone mocked to a force to be reckoned with. All the other members of the DA, people he knew to varying degrees but most of which he called friend.

The Weasleys, a family who had opened up their house to him. A family poor in financial terms but so very rich in terms of the love they had given him. Sirius, his godfather, and Remus, who had been there for him when he needed them. All the members of the Order of the Phoenix, in their way. But most of all, it was his core group of friends whose loss he felt the most, like a knife plunging deep into his chest, twisting and goring out his heart.

There was no way for him to return to them. No way that he could see except to wait. And twenty years was a long time, more than the life he had lived already. They wouldn’t even be old enough to be boarding the Hogwarts Express where he had first met them for at least a decade. And then they would be still children, and he would also be a decade older, a fully grown adult man not a child breaking the rules and worrying about homework. He would hopefully be working, a full time job, living his life. They could never catch up with him now, and even if he waited all the years for them to grown up to the age he was now, the age when he had been torn from them, he would have lived without them for so long that he could almost already feel the distance gaping between them.

It wasn’t fair, he thought, but he knew that life wasn’t fair. If life had been fair them he would have met them earlier, played with Ron and Hermione as children, happy and carefree. He would have been raised by loving parents who hadn’t died. Voldemort would never have even existed. And if life was fair, Harry felt his thoughts continue, Snape too would have had a loving family, not been bullied, remained friends with his mother. But life was unfair, a cruel, awful thing that people just had to suffer through. He might have despaired and given up, not wanting to face the future, but he was still the one chosen by Prophecy to defeat Voldemort. He was bound by his responsibility, as he had been for far too much of his life. It still held him firm.

He reached his hand into his pocket, stroking his wand as he looked almost longingly at the children as they played. Time travel was an awful idea he thought. Rather than going back in time he would rather that he had been given a new, better life, starting with the miserable childhood he had led. But nothing could change his past. He could try and interfere and change the future that awaited the Harry that was yet to be born, but aside from the general risk that he would accidentally collapse the universe, gift Voldemort a win or some other such melodramatic happening, it still wouldn’t change the life he had himself lived. It just might severely hamper the future he hoped he might have, the future where he finally defeated Voldemort.

He stroked his wand, lovingly but also with a bitter bile deep inside him rising up. He had loved magic since he had been told of its existence by Hagrid. He had loved Hogwarts. He had loved his wand, something far more than a simple tool for casting magic and more a symbol of his new life. A symbol of a hopeful future, that even Voldemort’s shadow had not yet managed to chase form him. But at the same time he felt a new feeling, a hatred for magic. Without magic, Voldemort would never have killed his parents. Without magic, he’d never have had his life threatened again and again during his teens. Without magic, he would never have been torn away from a life where he had painstakingly built himself a family out of the friends he had made, sent back to a place where he was alone. He still loved his wand, though, despite the conflicting feelings, stoking it lovingly to calm himself. He would find a way.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a middle-aged woman usher the children he had been sitting and watching away. She gave him a dirty look as she did so, gesturing slightly in his direction as she said something to the children that Harry couldn’t hear. They followed her away, giving Harry a strange look. He paused, and considered the position of his wand, the way he was fondling it in his pocket.

Great, he thought despondently. Now he had accidentally given some random muggles the impression that he was some kind of pervert. He sighed miserably.

As if to make his humiliation complete, he noticed a familiar figure watching him from outside the park. Snape clearly realised that he was touching his magic wand rather than the body part that some people might euphemistically refer to as his wand. Unhelpfully, Snape was laughing, leaning against a lamppost as his whole body shuddered in mirth. Harry had never seen Snape laugh before, and didn’t really appreciate that it was at his misfortune. Bitterly he wondered if, having made Snape laugh, he might have possibly fulfilled his duties in the past and that he could magically reawaken on the battlefield in the time that he belonged to. 

He didn’t have much hope for that.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (With that, Harry felt a sudden disturbance in reality shaking him to his core. His task having been accomplished to a degree that whatever had sent him back was satisfied by, mainly due to those forces being inanimate and having very low standards, he found himself back on the ground where he had fallen after Voldemort had killed him. He blinked slightly, feeling distinctly annoyed at the sudden and unpleasant sensation, as well as the futility of it all. He found himself looking into the slightly confused face of Narcissa Malfoy. He wondered, vaguely, just how the Snape he had just left in a run-down playground in Cokeworth had reacted, knowing that with the man dead he would never know. Which would have made for a slightly disappointing conclusion for the entire story, as well as requiring some necromancy to fulfil the snarry aspects of the plot. Luckily, this did not happen and this is a note, not the actual chapter.)

Harry remained where he was, sitting on a swing in a park that was verging on derelict, in Cokeworth. Snape continued to laugh. It wasn’t a very nice laugh, which could potentially have been connected to the fact that Snape was in many ways not a very nice person. It might also have been because Harry was acutely aware of the fact that he was the one being laughed at. The world moved on, time staying at its usual rhythm of going forwards one second at a time. Harry had never before considered time to be his enemy, but he was quickly forming a bit of a grudge.

Snape however did not stay at a distance, laughing at Harry’s misfortune. Once he had managed to get himself and his laughter under enough control he moved from where he was outside the park to approach the swings. There he leaned causally against the frame of the swings, looking at Harry with a degree of amusement. It wasn’t necessarily a friendly look, but it wasn’t quite as nasty as it could have been. Harry wished he wasn’t sitting down so precariously, and also that he could withdraw his wand. He had wisely removed his hand from his trouser pocket, and while it probably made him more appealing to the wider public who had admittedly left the playground, he would have preferred having easy access to his wand. It wasn’t like Snape was under any illusions as to what it was that he had in his pocket anyway, though it possibly would help get their second meeting off on a slightly better foot if Harry wasn’t brandishing his wand at him.

It was strange, for him to think that the other man knew nothing of him, considering how long Harry had known him and how it had always seemed that Snape knew next to everything about Harry. He had definitely had a worryingly accurate ability for detecting when Harry would be slinking around breaking the school rules, though luckily there was none of that to be worried about. Now it was the same as the life he had left behind, death was a more likely threat. He didn’t know if Snape was a teacher yet, though he found the idea slightly unlikely. He seemed far too young, aside from anything else, as well as the fact that had he been a teacher then it would make sense that he would be at Hogwarts rather than skulking around Cokeworth.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” Snape asked, his voice not quite the one that Harry had been expecting. It seemed different somehow from the one that had mesmerised a class while talking of brewing fame or putting a stopper in death, different from the soft tones that had terrified a whole cross-section of students. It was younger, for starters, and the accent seemed off. It sounded closer to an approximation of the way most of the other people Harry had heard speak around town, rather than the way he had heard the older Snape or even the younger Snape in the pensieve speak.

Harry shook his head, as no matter how he looked at it he did not come from Cokeworth by any stretch of the imagination. He had been raised in Surrey, a few years in the future, which felt like a world away from Cokeworth. He had always thought that Privet Drive was the antithesis of Hogwarts, but it appeared that Cokeworth was also a serious contender, whilst also managing to be the total antithesis of Privet Drive. Snape gave him a faintly suspicious look. It was probably that suspicion and lack of trust that had contributed to his abilities as a spy, as well as inhibiting his ability to make friends.

“What are you doing here then?” he asked, the implicit question as to why he had earlier on knocked on his door and behaved in a manner that did not suggest sanity hanging clearly in the air. Harry acknowledged that it was a perfectly valid question, especially given that the wizarding world was currently engaged in a rather bloody war and the minor fact that Harry was failing to be inconspicuous, but he really wished that Snape hadn’t asked him it. He didn’t have a very good answer to it, and in many ways it felt strangely reminiscent of his very first Potions class. 

Harry didn’t really think he could tell the truth, as somehow he didn’t imagine that saying something along the lines of ‘I recognised you from my past which is probably your future, so I followed you back from the pub last night’ would go down that well. Aside from the fact that Snape had been unimpressed with his previous claim at being from the future and the fact that Harry didn’t really want to explain that part too much, the whole following people back to their houses late at night seemed like something a stalker would do. Generally, creeping around late at night watching other people was not the kind of thing that boded well for the watched, and it was not really nice to hear that someone had been following you. 

Harry also didn’t want Snape to punch him, which somehow seemed slightly more likely than a curse. It was not a concern he had ever previously thought with regards to Snape, but he had never been in a muggle park with a young Snape who looked like a slightly rough muggle youth. The kind of young man that Petunia and Vernon would have disapproved of, muttering comments about gangs and violence. Only that wasn’t just conjecture, Petunia had disapproved of Snape back when he was still just a child. And Snape had joined the Death Eaters, which probably could be considered to be under the same category of violent gangs. So Harry wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that.

He also felt that it was probably best for him to not express the fact that he was starting the think that this was probably either hell or purgatory, he just wasn’t sure which because the Hogwarts curriculum was distinctly lacking when it came to theology, or indeed any mentions of religion, leaving him with only a very vague set of concepts he had gleaned from primary school. He also felt slightly affronted at the idea that after dying to try to save the wizarding world he would be condemned to either of those afterlives as it seemed somewhat harsh.

Sadly, all of that left him with ideas of what not to say but not a lot of ideas as to what he should say. He had no real excuse for being in Cokeworth, except random chance, and less reason for knocking on Snape’s door. He needed something that would make Snape at the very least amenable to him. As he looked into the dark eyes, he remembered looking into those same, older eyes as the man who owned them died, which made him remember his own eyes.

“Lily,” he murmured, suspecting that his mother was probably the best method to get Snape to at the very least not hate him. He hadn’t necessarily meant to say her name out loud, but Snape clearly heard the whisper. He froze, frowning slightly at Harry, then glancing round suspiciously. 

“Come on then,” he snapped suddenly, an abrupt change of demeanour, turning on his heel in a manner that should really have been accompanied by billowing black robes but wasn’t.

Harry didn’t react initially, until Snape glared back over his shoulder, clearly expecting Harry to follow. Harry leapt up, scurrying after him, rather resenting that he was still being made to rush after those familiar brisk strides just as he had when he was still a first year. He followed Snape back along the roads he had vaguely wandered down, only it was quite clear that Snape knew exactly where he was going whereas Harry had mostly had no clue. 

Snape unlocked his front door, giving it a cursory kick as he opened it. Harry wasn’t sure if that was him expressing his general feelings towards it, using it as a proxy for Harry’s head or if it might be that the door was stiff and therefore required either attention or violence with Snape opting for violence. The inside of the house was not significantly better than the outside. Snape kicked off his boots, which looked like they had spent the first world war fighting in the trenches before retiring to be passed down the generations until they ended up on Snape’s feet, and stomped into what Harry could see was the kitchen. Harry followed suit, removing his slightly nicer shoes and reluctantly putting his relatively new socks down on a carpet that wasn’t aware that the vacuum cleaner had been invented. He wasn’t entirely sure what colour it was supposed to be, or indeed what colour it was. All he was sure about was that it was rather grim.

In the kitchen, Snape was casually shoving something that looked suspiciously like a Death Eater’s mask into the cupboard under the sink before busying himself with the kettle. The kettle was the part of the kitchen that looked the newest, though it also clearly didn’t have much competition. Harry had to admit he didn’t know a huge amount about what counted for modern as he wasn’t particularly used to the muggle world, and what he did know of it came mostly from a few years in the future. For a few moments Harry hovered awkwardly in the doorway, before it occurred to him that Snape had exactly as few manners as the man he had known before, and decided to not wait for a seat to be offered and simply sit down in one of the chairs by the kitchen table.

He inspected the one closest to him carefully, before deciding to be brave and risk it. He could see no visible structural flaws, though once he had seated himself he realised that one of the legs was slightly shorter than the other. It didn’t collapse under his weight, which was the most important thing. In front of him on the table was a heap of parchment, mixed in with a few newspapers in a manner that was somewhat chaotic. At the top of the pile was a reused envelope with the word ‘tidy!’ scrawled on it in the handwriting that Harry recognised both from his Hogwarts classes and also the Half-Blood Prince’s potions textbook. Judging by the state of the kitchen, Harry concluded that Snape had not yet fulfilled this instruction. On the cooker was a cauldron, with a frying pan that contained a book on the hob beside it. Harry wasn’t sure how much the three items had to do with each other, but he was fairly certain they did not belong together.

“How do you like your tea?” Snape asked him, placing a mug of tea in front of Harry. Harry opening his mouth to answer, before concluding that Snape probably didn’t care. If he had cared, he would presumably have asked before making the tea. Harry simply accepted what he was given. He had come to accept that life rarely cared what he wanted and had just learnt to live with it. The realisation that this included tea shouldn’t have surprised him.

“Thanks,” he said, unsure if he was actually grateful. Snape sat down in the chair opposite him, a mug clasped in his hands. He gave Harry a look that seemed to be a mixture of curiosity and suspicion.

Harry wondered if the man in front of him could really be a Death Eater, despite the mask that he knew had been unceremoniously hidden away in possibly the least appropriate cupboard available. He wore muggle clothing, seeming perfectly comfortable and at home in a muggle house just as he had been in the muggle world outside. He hadn’t drawn his wand once, making tea as if he were a muggle, using the electric kettle and brewing it all entirely by hand. He knew, from the memories he had seen, that Snape had been raised in the muggle world but he had also been given the impression that Snape had hated it. Snape had definitely provided no hints whatsoever as Harry’s teacher at Hogwarts that he had ever had any contact with the muggle world, except when Harry thought about it he had. Harry had just been too caught up in everything else to notice. He’d been distracted by Dumbledore’s explanation of Voldemort, the way in which the dark shadow that had followed the rest of his life had started to take shape in his consciousness. And he had been blinded by his hatred. 

But Snape had known enough of muggle culture to understand and compose a logic puzzle, and had known enough of the wizarding world to know that it was the kind of thing that would baffle the average pureblood. He was just unlucky that it was those like him, Voldemort, Harry and Hermione, children raised in the muggle world and steeped in muggle logic, that had encountered it. He wondered how many of the Death Eaters would have been able to solve it. Or maybe, Snape had been arrogant and dismissive of purebloods, categorising them all with a broad, negative stereotype as so many did with muggleborns. Harry had no way of knowing, and no real way of asking. Maybe in the future, once Snape had composed his riddle, he could ask about it, but now it was a distant concept far on the horizon.

“I’m Severus,” Snape said, as if he was reluctant to give Harry that kind of information but felt that it was sadly necessary.

“I’m Harry,” Harry said, feeling obliged to provide a name. Severus didn’t seem particularly impressed. 

“I’m an alien from outer space, wanna see my space ship is what you were going for then?” Severus said, in the most non-sequitur statement Harry had ever heard him make. Harry looked at him in confusion. He sipped his tea to avoid having to answer or risk making the wrong facial expression, which led to him burning his tongue and regretting everything. The tea, as far as he could tell, was strong and unsweetened. Harry did not think it was worth objecting. 

“Though being from the future is kind of more Doctor Who,” Severus was muttering more to himself than Harry, which Harry was quite grateful for. Harry just looked faintly lost, trying to remember if the man he had know had been as mad as the Severus he was currently talking to. He hoped it wasn’t something he had inadvertently done with his time travel, though he wasn’t sure how he could have accidentally caused Severus’s apparent descent into madness.

“How do you know Lily then?” Severus asked, abruptly returning to a topic Harry understood and also didn’t want to discuss, as while Severus had been muttering to himself at least he had been ignoring Harry, “I assume that’s where you got your stupid line from,”

“I, er, met her briefly,” Harry claimed. An uncomfortable truth had wormed its way into his brain. Telling Severus the truth was, aside from being faintly unbelievable, potentially dangerous. After all, if the suggestion that attempting to defy Voldemort to save Lily had ended up with Lily dying anyway, Severus spending the rest of his life teaching students he clearly regarded as morons before ultimately dying himself in a manner that Harry had to admit had been rather unpleasant to say the least, it would rather suggest to the man that it would be a far better idea to hand Harry over to Voldemort along with all the information in exchange for Lily’s life. That would be a far better way of ensuring her survival, and this Severus was not the man who had given up everything for the cause of bringing Voldemort down. This Severus was almost certainly still an active Death Eater who just happened to still have a soft-spot for the woman who had once been his friend. There was far too much riding on Harry not being immediately executed by Voldemort to take a risk on someone who was clearly not exactly the most trustworthy person in the world, even if he would later become the person Harry could trust the most. 

Harry felt the sensation of a prod against his mind, which he recognised as Legimancy. Luckily for him and unluckily for Severus, Harry had learnt Occlumency, so he countered it with little problem. He had also had the experience of having his mind attacked by the older Severus Snape, and while the younger version was clearly skilled the older one felt more like being hit by a freight train. Severus looked briefly put out at his attempt being blocked before seeming to accept it.

“So you met Lily briefly, had a conversation about sci-fi and then came all the way to lovely Cokeworth to find me just for the pleasure of trying out a garbled phrase on me?” Severus asked in a slightly disbelieving tone of voice. Harry was still lost as to where he had got the whole sci-fi angle from. He was fairly certain he hadn’t mentioned it himself, but he felt that the conversation had progressed too far for him to ask, so he opted for sipping his tea again. 

“Are you mad?” Severus asked seriously, before shaking his head slightly and slurping his tea in a faintly inelegant way. Harry wondered if he should just nod. It might be easiest, but he didn’t know if he wanted Severus to simply dismiss him as a lunatic or even worse end up being sectioned. It didn’t seem like a very good way of dealing with being in the past. He wondered suddenly if there were any accidental time-travellers in the secure section of St Mungo’s. He didn’t want to find out.

“Where are you from?” Severus asked, “Clearly you hadn’t spent much time in the muggle world, but I don’t remember you from Hogwarts,”

Harry was briefly offended, as he had actually grown up in the muggle world, but then he realised that he wasn’t actually all that familiar with the muggle world he was in. He reckoned he could claim to be from Hogwarts, just a Hufflepuff or something from a different year that Severus had never noticed, but then he’d have to provide a pureblood family he was connected to, as the alternative was a muggleborn whose knowledge of the muggle world began in the mid-eighties. Hogwarts had notes of people who had been there too, so it didn’t seem like a lie that would last for long.

“Egypt,” he said, instantly regretting it. The only things he knew about Egypt were that there were pyramids and that the Weasleys went there once for a holiday. Neither of these facts were useful, as everyone knew that there were pyramids in Egypt and the Weasleys hadn’t been to Egypt yet. 

“But my parents were British,” he added hastily, “And I lived a very sheltered life there. I always wanted to come to England and so when they died I sold up everything and with the last of my savings I came here, to search for somewhere to live and get a job,” He smiled brightly.

“Of all the places on the planet,” Severus said incredulously, “You chose Cokeworth? Willingly?”

Harry had to admit that he had a point. Cokeworth didn’t seem like anyone’s idea of a good destination. He wondered briefly why Severus was still living there seeing as he appeared to hate it so much.

“I need somewhere cheap,” he said, truthfully, before following it up with another lie, “I got the impression you might be able to help me,”

“How desperate are you?” Severus asked after a moment, looking like he was having an internal conflict about whether he hated himself or Harry more. 

“Pretty,” Harry admitted, with a slight flurry of excitement. Maybe he was about to be indicted into some shady Death Eater dealing where he could have bed and board. It would give him an excellent opportunity for watching Voldemort and planning his next move. He was not quite expecting the reply he did get.

“A lodger would definitely make life easier to afford,” Severus muttered, at a volume that suggested he wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted Harry to hear it, directing the comment mostly at his cup of tea. Harry blinked in startled surprise, before being unable to control the grin that spread over his face.

“That would be fantastic,” he said, despite the fact that that would involve both living in the house he was currently sitting in as well as living with Severus. Severus gave him a look that suggested he was by now entirely convinced that Harry was completely bonkers.

The speed and casualness with which they agreed to their terms suggested to Harry that it wasn’t the most legally sound arrangement in the universe, but seeing as he didn’t legally exist yet he was actually rather satisfied. He did suspect that it was a combination of Severus’s belief that Lily had for some reason sent him over to Severus out of the goodness of her heart along with financial desperation that made Severus amenable to the idea. Harry was likewise feeling desperate enough to agree to a situation that he mostly imagine would end disastrously.


	6. Chapter 6

Severus did not seem particularly impressed by the lack of possessions that Harry had. It did however mean that it was very easy for Harry to move from the hotel room he had been occupying to the room that Severus had described as ‘shit’. Harry didn’t think that was a good way of selling the room to him, but it was also perfectly accurate. The first time he tried to open it, the door handle had come of in his hands. Severus had shrugged and fixed it in a manner that suggested that it was a quite normal occurrence. It made Harry suspect that he would have to either learn how to fix it permanently or get good at the casual temporary reattachment that Severus had performed. He might have objected, but he didn’t feel that he had many options. It seemed like a good one, and one that was almost perfect in many ways, door handles and the general state of the house aside. He had after all spent his childhood sleeping in the cupboard under the stairs, so the room was at least a slight improvement on that. It just wasn’t quite as nice as his bed in Gryffindor Tower, though better than a lengthy camping trip chased by Death Eaters.

He was also grateful that Severus would be cooking for them that evening. Harry was sick of discounted sandwiches. He was both looking forward to cooking for himself and also nervous that it would end like Potions classes had often ended, with Severus insulting him in a wide variety of ways. It might be interesting to see if the insults varied when Severus was not aware of who his parents actually were. He knew that he could cook perfectly well, his childhood with the Dursleys had seen to that, but he also knew that Severus had the uncanny ability to make him nervous as well as being able to find fault with everything. 

“Come, I’ll show you how to use the record player,” Severus offered once Harry had finished dumping all of his worldly possessions on the floor of the room that was now his, “It’s a bit temperamental so there’s a trick to it.”

Harry was quite relieved by this, as he had never before used a record player as it was not the kind of thing he had ever been free to experience while living with the Dursleys. It also suggested that Severus wouldn’t mind Harry playing music, though Harry wasn’t sure if he was going to be doing so when they were both at home. He watched attentively as Severus carefully selected a record from the small collection shoved into one of the bookcases that lined the wall of the small living room.

The room and furniture, including the aforementioned record player, were the same as the rest of the house; tatty and a million miles away from Privet Drive. Harry was impressed with the amount of books that were creatively stored throughout the house, though it did also serve to give the rooms a more disorganised and cluttered aesthetic. There was a small sofa and an armchair in the living room, which didn’t match, and looked like they had made the round trip to Mordor. Books were piled erratically on the sofa, as if Severus had not yet bothered to put them away. Harry wasn’t sure where they were supposed to go, as as far as he could tell the book shelves were already full far beyond capacity. He wasn’t even certain whether it was possible to remove some of the books, with how carefully they had been stacked into all the available space. 

“Watch,” Severus said pointedly, carefully removing the record from its sleeve. He handed the sleeve to Harry to hold, who took it and gave it a glance. It seemed to show a lady mixing herbs, which suited Severus as far as Harry could tell. He watched carefully as Severus manoeuvred the needle of the record player, placing the record down and setting it. He wasn’t entirely sure what gestures or steps were beyond the ones that were normally required, but he could tell that the record player was old. He was definitely grateful for the very clear and precise tutorial.

“ _Then came the question and it was about time_ ,” sang a woman, her voice clear and as enchanting as a Veela. Harry listened as Severus let the song play, letting it wash over him. They both stood still, until the final notes ended and Severus demonstrated how to remove the record, handling it carefully and almost reverently.

“It’s a beautiful song,” Harry said quietly, handing back the sleeve, “Though kind of sad in a way.”

“Yeah,” Severus said, looking into the distance for a moment, “ _I wish I were somewhere and not in this town, maybe the ocean next time around_ …”

He sighed, and put the record away, “Next Time Around by Sandy Denny. I’ve got some of her other stuff, it’s all good,” he said, “Feel free to play it just don’t damage anything.”

Harry nodded his understanding as he considered the room as a whole again. He wondered it there might be information regarding fixing doorhandles in amongst the books, whether it be by the muggle method or by magic. He knew that another option was to just ask Severus, which might be easier given the fact that he suspected that there was no particular organisation system to the books. He briefly considered organising his own belongings, but then decided that they may as well remain in a heap in the middle of his bedroom floor. 

He found himself sitting in the kitchen that evening, watching Severus cook. He might have expected it to be similar to Potions classes at Hogwarts, with intricate measuring and a complicated recipe, but as far as Harry could tell there was no recipe book anywhere in sight. He wondered if any of the books lying around were recipe books, which he could use to expand his knowledge of cooking from what he had learnt from his aunt. He had helped tidy the kitchen table slightly, as the newspapers weren’t really needed, though Harry would probably have read them had Severus not casually bundled the lot of them up and thrown them out without asking Harry. Harry had decided it wasn’t worth objecting about, and had simply sat down with a cup of tea at the table to watch Severus cook. Had he been left alone he might have opened the cupboard under the sink to see if what he had assumed was a Death Eater mask was still there, but he hadn’t been in the kitchen alone. He didn’t know what he would gain from the discovery anyway, as he already knew Severus was a Death Eater. He also hoped that it had been moved while he was moving his belonging.

He hadn’t really thought that he would be actively opting to spend time with Severus, but it had been a while since he had properly talked to another person, so even though it was Severus and Harry had too many secrets for any conversation they had to be a properly open and honest one it was still something. He found that he preferred the idea of sitting in the presence of someone else, someone who was ultimately familiar even if he was also in total ignorance of this fact, rather than having a look through Severus’s books to see if there was anything Harry might be interested in reading. He imagined there would probably be a lot about dark magic, though he hadn’t actually checked to see if his assumption was correct.

“So,” Severus asked, his back to Harry, “How old are you?” It was in many ways a part of the basic getting to know the other type of question that normally would be dealt with before agreeing to live together, but clearly both of them had been fairly desperate. He was crouched by the fridge, where he carefully removed something and seemed to give it a slight sniff as if to check that it was still alright, which did not exactly reassure Harry much about the state of the house, though he did also assume that Severus had a fairly good sense of smell, partly because of his nose and partly because of his ability with Potions. 

“Eighteen,” Harry answered, which was a lie. He wasn’t eighteen yet, though he was close. He would turn eighteen on the day that he was born, which seemed strangely profound in its way. It just wasn’t a very helpful piece of information. But he wanted to distance himself from the date which fell within the bounds of the Prophecy. And he felt that he had lived more months than he actually had, as if life was longer for him than it had been for everyone else. More happened to him in his life than happened to most people over a similar time. So he lied. He was almost eighteen after all.

“How about you?” He asked. He could have figured it out, calculating back from the age he knew his parents had been when they died, knowing that Severus must be their age. But it was easier to ask, and there would be no reason for him not to know anyway, so he asked. He knew that the Snape he had known was the same age as Sirius and Remus, but it still seemed hard for him to fully comprehend. It was in part because he had met Snape when he was eleven, so he had simply categorised him along with all his other teachers as unbelievably old. He was now aware that being categorised as in the same age-bracket as Dumbledore was probably deeply insulting. Remus he had met first as his teacher but their relationship had later been redefined by his friendship with both Sirius and Harry’s father, so he seemed to be a younger adult in a way, despite the Remus that Harry had left in the future having hints of grey in his hair whereas the Snape he had known did not. Harry rather suspected that Snape’s hair wouldn’t dare go grey.

“Twenty,” Severus replied. Harry was in a way relived. It still felt surreal to be sitting there with him, still so very young, but at least Severus was still older than him, even if only fractionally. He discounted the idea that Severus might be lying to him, despite the fact that Harry was lying, as it didn’t seem to make much sense.

“So you just decided to up sticks and come to Britain?” Severus continued, slicing what Harry assumed was an onion, “Do you have any other plans?”

“I… guess I need to get a job…” Harry said with a sigh. 

“Anything in particular?” Severus asked, casually throwing ingredients into the frying pan without paying much attention to the amounts. 

“I’ve always wanted to be an Auror,” Harry admitted honestly, before it occurred to him it probably wasn’t necessarily a great thing to admit to a man who he knew was a Death Eater. Severus seemed to pause slightly in his movements, before shrugging slightly.

“Have you applied?” he asked, as if there was much chance that Harry had applied despite all the evidence to the contrary.

“No…” Harry said, “I heard you need specific NEWTs, which I don’t have…” He paused, considering things, as Severus ignored him in favour of cooking. 

“I don’t actually have any legal documents. I think I might need some for getting a job…” he admitted.

“Go to the city council,” Severus suggested, “They should be able to give you something.”

“Even if I have nothing?” Harry asked, as he did have very little idea of what city councils did. It had never been a concern of his when he lived in Little Whinging. 

“Confound them…” Severus said, as if he was talking to a particularly dim specimen. Harry stared at his turned back for a moment, slightly concerned at the ease with which Severus had suggested something that he was fairly confident was illegal, and to someone who had just said he wanted to be an Auror, who tended to police such things. It was, however, probably the best advice Harry could get. He was slightly concerned about Severus’s total lack of concern over his claim to have no documents of identification at all. He had spent a bit of the day coming up with an excuse as to why he didn’t have any, and a part of him was slightly disappointed not to have a reason to tell Severus it. A larger part of him thought it was probably best left unsaid, just in case it proved to be the final detail that had Severus realise a lot of what Harry had said was a lie. It had involved a mummy, as he knew that there were mummies in Egypt. 

“You don’t really know much about the muggle world, do you?” Severus asked, a slight hint of amusement in his tone, which Harry resented slightly. He had always thought he did know a decent amount about the muggle world, just maybe not quite as much as he might have expected with being raised in the muggle world, as well as it being for the wrong time-frame. He had come to realise that despite their attempts to be normal the Dursleys were not actually normal at all, especially not when it came to their child-rearing techniques. He was now aware that normal muggle families, like normal wizarding families, did not tend to keep children, even if they were slightly unwanted nephews, in the cupboard under the stairs. 

“I guess not,” he admitted. He had not ever expected that he would be getting to know the muggle world in this context. He was not particularly pleased with the idea, not so much because he hated the muggle world but more that he preferred the wizarding world because it had magic and he liked magic. He wondered if muggleborns felt the same way. Severus, he realised, would have been in a similar situation to him, having clearly come from a household in the muggle world but one that like Harry’s tended towards abusive behaviours and therefore the wizarding world was infinitely better by comparison. He did not mention the fact that he had a vague idea of the childhood that Severus had experienced, because it seemed like a bad idea. He didn’t want to be kicked out before spending his first night at Spinner’s End.

“And yet you just upped sticks without a second thoughts…” Severus muttered, eating one of the vegetables that Harry had assumed were chillis but now suspected might be small red peppers. Either way, Severus nibbled on one of them as he tossed the rest of what was on the chopping board into the frying pan. The smell seemed to be that of what Harry would vaguely identify as curry, though he wouldn’t be able to say what kind.

“Who’s the muggle Prime Minister?” Severus asked suddenly, turning to lookout Harry, brandishing a knife absentmindedly. Harry looked at the knife for a moment, before deciding it was not intended for him. Severus just happened to still have it in his hand.

Harry thought frantically. He had never paid any attention to muggle politics, and even if he had he had never known anything about what to him had been historical politics.

“I don’t know,” he answered with a shrug. Severus shrugged, a gesture that would have been a lot more causal had he not had a knife in his hand.

“Alright, who’s the Minister of Magic?” Severus asked again, reminding Harry of his first Potions class. He wondered if Severus started every relationship off with giving people quizzes. He was fairly certain that the answer wasn’t Fudge, but aside from him he had no idea. He had never paid much attention to the Ministry and the Minister besides the manner in which they affected him. No one had ever quizzed him on the topic before.

“I don’t know…” he said again, not particularly happy at how this was going. He didn’t have much time to collect his thoughts, however, as Severus fired off another question.

“What’s twelve times six?” Severus asked and Harry stared at him. It had been along time since he even contemplated the existence of maths, as Hogwarts didn’t have it as a subject and he had pointedly not taken Arithmancy. He had last used his times tables when he was still in primary school, and he had forgotten them through disuse. He probed his memory, trying to come up with the answer, but clearly took took long as Severus turned away to stir the curry with a despairing sigh.

“Do you really know nothing?” he asked, turning back without the knife, which Harry was slightly relieved to notice. 

“Wolfsbane and aconite are the same damn thing!” Harry snapped, desperate to demonstrate that he did in fact know something. Severus stared at him in surprise, entirely unaware of the context. Harry breathed deeply, realising that he was once again acting in a manner that probably made him look mildly insane. He was starting to think it was Severus who really brought it out in him. When he went back through their interactions throughout his life, he did tend to say and do more odd things when Severus was around, as if he was a kind of living curse.

“Is… that it?” Severus asked, “Some basic Potions knowledge?”

He didn’t look as impressed as Harry would have liked. Harry considered briefly informing him that ghosts were transparent, but he didn’t think that would go down well. He nodded, accepting that once again he was giving Severus the impression that he was an idiot. He felt like he did know stuff, just that he never knew the kind of things that Severus asked.

“I did study something like the Hogwarts curriculum,” Harry said slightly sulkily, “Though I didn’t quite finish it. But I do know some stuff…”

“Oh,” Severus said with a nod, “So you went to school?”

“Err…” Harry said, not wanting to invent an entire Egyptian school given his lack of knowledge of Egypt and Africa in general, “My parents taught me at home, from some textbooks. In our pyramid you know…”

“Yeah,” Severus said, “That makes sense. Explains why you have no social skills.”

He turned back to his cooking at that moment, which meant that he missed the incredulous expression on Harry’s face. Harry stared at him, mouth hanging slightly open. He did not expect to be criticised regarding his ability to socialise by Severus, who as far as he could tell had limited interest in socialising or the concept of being nice. 

The meal prepared, Severus served it onto plates that didn’t match and placed them on the table. He then sat down opposite Harry and they began to eat. It was, as Harry had assumed, curry. It was also far spicier than Harry had thought possible. He felt a burning sensation on his lips, his tongue, and all the way down his throat. Severus by contrast didn’t seem to be in the least bit affected by the spice as he ate. Harry concluded that it had been a chilli that he’d eaten earlier. Harry had little experience of curries, as they were not commonly on the menu at Hogwarts and as a child they had been firmly categorised by his uncle as foreign muck that they therefore never ate. 

“I might know a shop that might be looking to hire temporarily and who won’t be too fussed about documents,” Severus said, entirely oblivious to the fact that Harry’s tongue was ninety percent third-degree burns, or at least it felt that way.

“Mmhmm,” Harry said, his eyes still watering. He sipped at his water, which only made matters worse. Underneath the spice he could tell that it tasted good and that Severus was clearly a perfectly competent cook, he just liked things hotter than Harry was comfortably able to handle. Harry wondered if he’d adjust or if his tongue would disintegrate first. 

“Because I’m not letting you stay here for free,” Severus continued as Harry continued to eat, sweating more than he would have liked. Harry nodded, knowing that Severus was not helping him out of the goodness of his heart as Harry knew that Severus did not have much of a heart. He was mostly grateful for the kindness he had been shown. 

When he did go to bed that night, in a bedroom that was rundown but adequate, he slept better than he had expected. He still wasn’t completely certain what he was going to do with the rest of his life. He missed his old life, his old friends and his previous sense of certainty, but he had at least found a temporary respite. He had a faint hope that being friendly with Severus might lead him to fulfilling whatever terms it was that had led to him being sent back in time, and that he could then be returned, though most of him expected that he would be in for the long haul.


End file.
